Middlesex Hospital, London: And wasn't it here Simone Weil died? Wasn't it here she returned in January 1943, having escaped from occupied France to the USA? It was physical danger she craved - to be parachuted behind enemy lines, or to care for the wounded in the thick of battle. Instead - what disappointment! - she was found clerical work for the Free French.
Still, over the next four months, she found the time to write the work for which she is most famous - reflecting on theology, philosophy and religion, translating sections of the Upanishads and Tibetan Buddhist writings, analysing Marxism: some eight hundred pages sprang forth from her pen. At the same time, she reflected on the nature of force - an abiding concern - reading advanced physics and mathematics.
Eight hundred pages. She wrote day and night, locking herself into her office. She wrote without changes, without erasures, her handwriting very clear, upright and calm.
'I tenderly love this city with its wounds ...': she wrote that in a letter to her parents. 'I love this city more and more, this country and the people who inhabit it...' Hyde Park Corner, where she walked on Sundays, was her Athenian agora: she listened to the speakers, marvelling that, during the war, there were still people gathered to listen. She visited working class pubs. She went to noon concerts at the National Gallery and saw King Lear at the theatre. And she went to Mass every Sunday, longing but unwilling to participate in the sacraments, because the Church stood between her and her God ...
And all the while she dreamt of serving France. All the while, she dreamt of being entrusted with a mission, of danger, of death. She must not seek out affliction, she knew that. 'I am outside the truth; nothing human can take me there ...'
And she ate less and less. She would eat no more than she imagined her starving compatriots. 'My fatigue is increasing' ... But tuberculosis was already spreading from an infected lung. Hospitalised, refusing the treatment that might help her, and still dreaming of using her remaining strength to meet death in action, she died on August 24th 1943 ...